We have set aside next August 31st, 11:00 AM Eastern, to walk through the agenda of the Group A Public Comment Hearings.

The International Code Council has received all comments on its proposed changes to Group A codes which includes healthcare facility safety and sustainability concepts for the 2021 International Building Code. Breakout committees are now sorting through the public comments and preparing them for the Group A Public Comment Hearings, October 24-31, 2018 in Richmond Virginia. See: Complete 2018 Group A Schedule. We encourage students, faculty and facility management professionals in the Richmond Virginia area to attend the ICC 2018 Group A Code Hearings October 21 – 31 in Richmond Virginia. (LEARN MORE)

We participate as an observer in the healthcare committee with an eye toward how new proposals with effect design, construction, operation and maintenance of education and university-affiliated healthcare facilities. The record of our work and attention to concepts in play is reported routinely on this site and always on the agenda of our weekly open agenda teleconferences. At the moment there is not much for public stakeholders to do until the Public Comment monograph is released to the public on August 31st. We will be participating in the ICC breakout committee meetings until then.

On August 31st, 11:00 AM we will host a breakout teleconference of our own to sort through all the safety and sustainability issues in play as a result of the public comments. Anyone is welcomed to join this teleconference with the login information in the link below:

Generally speaking, the healthcare facilities affiliated with large research universities are built to the same standard as healthcare facilities everywhere else. We only point out that there are two differences — unique to university-affiliated healthcare systems — that might be brought to bear upon the development of the next revision of the IBC:

University-affiliated healthcare enterprises tend to be the destination for patients that need specialized care. The destination of last resort, so to say, because those enterprises have physicians engaged in leading-edge therapies, and therefore a different (typically, higher) risk profile than most healthcare enterprises.

Essential utility supplies — water, power, telecommunications, etc. — can be complicated by the character of the utilities of the host municipality serving the perimeter of the campus; essentially a city-within-a-city.

All other safety and sustainability concepts are the same, as an examination of the redlines linked above should reveal.

Because the Group A Hearings is such an large undertaking, breakout committees administered by ICC staff have been preparing public input for presentation at the hearings. Several months of work by the healthcare committee is linked below:

The International Code Council released the 2018 Report of the Committee Action Hearings on the 2018 Editions of the Group A International Codes. The 313 page monograph linked below contains the results of the balloting of all Group A codes:

Public comments are due July 16th. These concepts will eventually be incorporated by reference into state building codes and thereby affect #TotalCostofOwnership. We encourage architects, engineers, education facility managers, shop foremen and front line tradespersons to set up a (free) cdpAccess account at THIS LINK to begin commenting on the monograph. Ahead of the July 16th deadline we have set aside a time slot — next Thursday, July 12th, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Eastern time — to explain our comments on all the proposed changes to the 2018 IBC for the 2021 edition. Anyone is welcomed to join this teleconference with the login information below:

Of course, the ICC develops many other consensus documents — it is hard upon the 2019 Group B codes — so we keep the entire ICC suite on the standing agenda of our weekly Open Door teleconferences every Wednesday, 11 AM Eastern Time. Click here to log in.